Thursday, 28 November 2013

The Scottish Socialist Party welcomes the publication of the Scottish Governments Independence White Paper ‘Scotland’s Future – Your Guide to an Independent Scotland’. We believe it is a comprehensive and timely addition to the most important debate the people of Scotland have faced in decades.

As partners in the ‘Yes Scotland’ coalition the Scottish Socialist Party shares the Government’s commitment to Independence and belief in the immense benefits it can bring the people of Scotland.

We commend the White Paper’s commitment to social and political democracy, prosperity and fairness. We believe it reflects the social democratic aspirations of the people of Scotland and we particularly welcome those sections; providing universal free childcare for pre-school children, scrapping the hated ‘bedroom tax’, removing Trident nuclear weapons, growing Scotland’s economy and population by welcoming those who wish to come and live here, returning Royal Mail to public ownership, introducing a written constitution, providing seats for worker directors on company boards, supporting greater environmental protection, promoting greater energy efficiency and extending much needed social protection to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.

The White Paper sets out a clear vision of Independence that unquestionably represents very significant advance for the people of Scotland.

We also welcome the commitment to reduce gas and electricity bills by 10% per annum after Independence but would like to have seen the Scottish Government go further given the publics very real concern over these bills and re-iterate the pledge it made in its 2007 manifesto to eradicate fuel poverty in Scotland completely.

We would also liked to have seen a commitment to take the renewable energy industry into public ownership – just as the Scottish Government did recently with Prestwick Airport - and to return our gas and electricity supply industry into public hands as we believe both measures are concomitant with pledges to achieve greater economic prosperity, social democracy and fairness. The SSP also prefers the approach Norway took to its oil and gas resources in taking them into public ownership rather than privatising them.

The Scottish Socialist Party advocates an Independent socialist Scotland. And like many Scots we favour a modern democratic republic. There are inevitably therefore some proposals in the White Paper we do not support such as reducing Corporation Tax, entering a ‘Sterling Zone’ for our own currency, NATO membership and retaining an un-elected, unrepresentative monarch as our Head of State in our new, modern, democratic Scotland.

Nonetheless, we wholeheartedly agree with the view expressed in the White Paper that ‘Decisions about Scotland will be taken by the people who care most about Scotland – those who live and work here’. And in that spirit we fully acknowledge that all the issues in the White Paper should and indeed will be decided by the people of Scotland themselves in the first elections to our newly Independent Parliament in 2016.

For our part the Scottish Socialist Party will continue to highlight the significant advantages Independence brings to Scotland; no more Tory Governments, no more Trident missiles, no more ‘bedroom tax’, returning the Royal Mail to public ownership and above all self-determination for the people of Scotland at last – all in all a much more attractive prospect than the one we currently face.

The Scottish Socialist Party remains focused above all on winning a resounding ‘Yes’ vote in the 2014 Referendum and we continue to work alongside all our partners in the ‘Yes Scotland’ coalition to secure that pre-eminent objective.

Saturday, 23 November 2013

Many people have asked me for copies of my speech to todays Radical Independence Conference in Glasgow so here it is....

Britain isn’t workingCan I begin by saying how proud
the Scottish Socialist Party is to be part of this wonderful celebration of
ideas and this progressive Independence movement.

This session, examining the failure
of British capitalism & its state, is a gentle start to a day we
all hope I’m sure is productive above all in helping to identify the solutions
to that failure and delivering a programme & strategy for transformational
change that can find mass support in Scotland today.

‘Scotland benefits from a strong, successful UK
and has done for 300 years, so why change?’

That is the NO message. It is a
message I am familiar with both as a Board Member of ‘Yes Scotland’ and having
spent the last month debating with Labour MP’s/MSP’s in a series of meetings
organised by the Communications Workers Union as part of its membership
consultation on the Independence Referendum.

And the inevitable question I put
to those MP’s was ‘What successful UK are you referring to?’

Because the Scottish working class,
who make up the overwhelming majority of the population of this country, do not
benefit, we are held back by the UK. Our standard of living today is in steep
decline as our bills rise and our incomes plunge despite being repeatedly told
the worst economic recession in 80 years is over!

Scotland is one of the richest
country’s in the world and yet we continue to endure searing poverty, a health
epidemic caused by that poverty, a chronic housing shortage and a life
expectancy level in parts of this city lower than the third world.

Our lives are blighted by
casualisation and super-exploitation at work, our pensions are under assault,
we face widening inequalities and our children face a future worse than their
parents.

And our political rights are denied
us as Scotland’s ‘social democratic’ aspirations to avoid the hateful &
exploitative politics of the UK is repeatedly thwarted by a neo-liberal
financial elite at Westminster & the City of London.

This is a systemic failure rather
than the mistaken policies of this or that individual Govt.

This ‘systemic’ economic and
political failure is down to a system based on the exploitation of the
many by the few. The rich, via their ownership of capital, exploit those who
must sell their labour hourly simply to survive. The constancy of that
relationship means the poor achieve relief from brutal exploitation only by
organising and fighting back.

And British neo-liberalism is
amongst the most exploitative in the world.

Others on this platform have
mentioned the child poverty that sees 1 in 3 children in Glasgow for example
suffer deprivation, the food banks - the modern day soup kitchens, the ‘Zero
hour’ contracts, casualisation of labour & vicious exploitation of youth,
immigrants and claimants.

But I wish in the short time
available to me to attest that Britain’s inability to provide gas &
electricity to 1/4 of its households indicates an equally profound sign of
failure.

The particular misery of fuel
poverty has a developed into ‘the perfect storm of our time’ illustrating the
‘systemic’ failure at the heart of UK PLC.

The huge rise in heating bills has
occurred as wages in the poorest families have fallen 11% in real terms.
Consequently Scotland now has one million households [1/3 of the total] living
in ‘fuel poverty’ [spending 10% of their income on heating bills], and unable
to keep warm, up from 220,000 in 2004.

And I want to say to the million families shivering away
on this cold day in Scotland that your ‘fuel poverty’ is not your fault!

How can it be? Not when the poorest
face the highest tariffs, not when 6 power companies declared combined profits
of £8bn last year, not when Govt reports suggest 27,000 people are expected to
die of ‘cold related diseases’ this winter.

That’s not your fault, that’s their
fault!

We have the perfect example of a
systemic failure with harrowing consequences; bills rise as private power
companies extort greater profits, incomes fall and Government cuts eat away at
the ‘Winter fuel allowance’ and those other meagre programmes designed to help
the most vulnerable. Eight million people in Britain [Dept of Energy and
Climate Change] can no longer afford this basic human necessity. And the UK’s
response? Like Queen Marie Antoinette from the French Revolution who said to
those hungry for bread - ‘Let them eat cake!

And to chill the blood even further the National Audit
Office predicted this week that gas & electricity bills will rise above the
rate of inflation for the next 17 years as customers must pay for essential
infrastructure improvements.

Friends, an Independent Scotland must
deliver on the promise many before us failed to deliver to eradicate fuel
poverty in this energy rich country once and for all!

And that means returning the gas and electricity supply
industry to public ownership to ensure no one is left out in the cold in 21st
century Scotland. That’s the kind of society we will
build as opposed to the one we leave behind in 2014!

Margo Macdonald said this week ‘Independence
is not a policy it is a mechanism for delivering policy.’ And I think that is
right. Independence offers a route around British failure.

But of course, as Dennis, Patrick
and I will point out in welcoming the SNP Govts White Paper on Tuesday ‘other
visions of Independence are available’.

For the vision that merely offers a
Saltire flying above corporate HQs instead of a Union Jack; that lets financial
corporate crooks do their worst with impunity and their lackeys remain in
charge - telling us no doubt how little can be changed and how long it will
take. That is not the vision for me because it addresses none of the
fundamental failures in our society.

No, Independence is the progressive
option above all because it offers change, a chance to replace the neo-liberal
elite with the honest, social democratic aspirations of the majority.

Independence is a profound
opportunity, it is as Margo suggests, the key that allows us to break free from
the handcuffs of the British ruling class and their political prison.

They are steadfastly opposed to
Independence of course because it shakes the very foundations of their power
structure, their influence and control.

Me? I’m for
an Independent socialist Scotland, a modern democratic republic where we, the working
class majority, are in charge of our own country & our own destiny at last.

So, be prepared for the fight of
your lives these next 10months as they defend their power and privilege from
attack and we mobilise the people of Scotland behind change.

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

The National Audit Office today published a report
predicting the cost of upgrading Britain’s energy industry infrastructure -
£176bn– would be passed on to hard pressed households and mean customers facing
inflation busting rises in the cost of gas and electricity for the next 17
years.

The news will send another unwelcome shiver down the collective spine of
every household in Britain as the soaring price of gas and electricity is already people’s number one concern right now.

The NAO report shows that 8% of the average household’s
spending goes on energy and water bills.

Spending 10% of your
income on energy is the official definition of being in ‘fuel poverty’.
Therefore this report shows just how close the average UK household now
is to being 'fuel poor'. And of course since all averages hide a multitude of
variations those households on the lowest incomes already
pay 15% of their money on energy and water as it is. Many already find
themselves in ‘extreme fuel poverty’ as it is - paying 20% of total income on energy.

The prospect of another 17 years of this will understandably terrify them
all as hypothermia already takes its toll. Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics found in his Report
commissioned by the UK Government that 27,000 people died prematurely from
‘cold related diseases' last winter brought on by prolonged exposure to ‘fuel poverty’. That's more than were killed on Britain's road and more than the entire population of Wishaw dying needlessly each winter!

And this in an energy rich country like ours!

Since Thatcher privatised the energy industry in the 1980’s
the burden of funding infrastructure improvements has been shifted from the
Government to the customer. In keeping with her neo-liberal philosophy the
financial burden has been shifted from the rich to the poor, from the taxpayer to the
customer. And this has meant a move away from progressive taxation to
regressive indirect taxation where energy bills heavily disadvantage the working
class and the poor.

The solution is to return the energy industry to public
hands, just as the Scottish Socialist Party advocates, and fund the cost of
infrastructure programmes from general taxation where the rich are asked to pay
more and we move away from regressive customer charges, which bear no relation to a
household’s ability to pay them.

Gas and electricity bills have doubled over the past decade, yet
average incomes have not increased at all. And the poorest households have
actually seen an 11% fall in their real incomes.

The blame for soaring energy bills has been variously
ascribed to infrastructure costs, the increased wholesale price of gas and the cost
of ‘green’ subsidies. Either way, most households now face a very difficult
time indeed in trying to pay for gas and electricity they can ill afford. That prospect has just been drawn out by another 17 years by this reports findings!

It is surely only a matter of time before we see the same
mass unrest over energy bills here that we have seen in Bolivia, Bulgaria,
Egypt and elsewhere during this past year. And perhaps we should also take a leaf out of the German
protests where mass unrest has been directed towards referenda on returning the
industry to public ownership and a reform agenda which demands no one suffers
the indignity of fuel poverty whilst rich multi-national energy companies make
obscene profits.